Bedraggled As I Am
by OldFashionedGirl95
Summary: In which Lucy is insightful, Scrubb is morose, Jill has artist's block, and a melancholy story is told. The second chapter of a collaborative work with Rthstewart and Starbrow. Part of the Stone Gryphon Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies AU.


This is part of Rthstewart's _Stone Gryphon Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies _AU and follows after her _Under Cover _and _Hung Out To_ _Dry._ If you're not familiar with those stories, go read them first.

Starbrow and I read _Hung Out To Dry _on LiveJournal and decided that Scrubb and Pole desperately needed a happy ending. Here's the first part of the sequel, written in collaboration with Starbrow and Rthstewart, to whom I am deeply grateful for endless help and encouragement. A couple of these scenes are entirely Rth's work (I seem to be unable to write Eustace's POV) and all my favorite lines are hers or Starbrow's. ButRth says all _her _favorite lines are the ones _I _wrote, so ah well. We'll share. Stay tuned for the third chapter, tentatively titled _Enchantment Vast But Foolish, _from Starbrow. After that, Rthstewart has promised a conclusion.

* * *

_I, dust and bedraggled as I am  
Pestered with wasps and weeds and making jam  
Blowzy and stale, my welcome long outstayed  
Proved false in every promise that I made,  
At my beginning I believed, like you  
Something would come of all my green and blue.  
Mortals, remember, looking on the thing  
I am, that I—even I—was once a spring._  
C. S. Lewis, "Late Summer"

_The king's poet ached with belated verse;  
he took part against himself; his heart waited  
for his voice, and again his voice for his dumb heart._  
Charles Williams, "The Queen's Servant"

* * *

Scrubb woke one morning with frost on his tent and a thin coating of ice in his wash bucket. The summer was fading fast and if he didn't get out of the Badlands soon, he'd spend the winter in Drumheller, very cold, with nothing but his rocks and a lot of coal miners for company.

_You could go further south_, the stupid, irrational part of his not-brain said. _They've probably moved on—probably are at Ghost Ranch by now. _

He owed Mary everything—his university admission and firsts, his research grants and honouraria, the introductions at Yale, Harvard, the Smithsonian, in New York and Philadelphia. She'd let him take lead author honours on the articles. She'd given him everything.

_But not the one thing you really wanted. _

_Shut up. _

_She only did it all out of guilt._

He banged his boots on the hard ground, making sure nothing had crawled in overnight, and shoved them on his feet. His breath was frosty in the gray morning chill. Plunging his face into the ice cold water brought the harsh return to reality and reason.

_New Mexico would be warmer. But... _He winced inwardly at the analogy of lying in the beds he'd made.

Dawn was breaking over the hoodoos, casting light on the Cretaceous shales and sandstones.

He'd been dogging _their _footsteps for five years. Of course he'd lose out to the High King. Did he really expect any differently?

_I can't go back_.

That was it, he decided. It was time to go see Pole.

* * *

Ripping up her third spoiled rose sketch, Jill threw her pad down in disgust and leaned against the balcony rail. There was something lacking in her art of late—not wrong, exactly—nothing she could put her finger on, but something flat. She'd been feeling it for days. Weeks? She didn't think this malingering listlessness had been troubling her for the whole summer. She'd attributed it to too many commitments, too many projects due, but she'd finished them all yesterday, all but the _Coelophysis bauri _illustration for Scrubb; then she sat down to sketch the roses. She'd wanted to sketch the roses all week, only she hadn't had time, and now she had time and what was on the page wasn't what she saw with her eye or in her mind, _at all_..

Jill sighed and got up, reaching for her sketchbook. Maybe water colours would be better, and then she could take another stab at Scrubb's dinosaur, and tomorrow she'd wrap it all up and post it.

* * *

Scrubb arrived the next afternoon, unannounced. He was dusty, unshaven, bone-thin. He said little, but when they had cooked and eaten and sat together, he asked her to go with him to New York, and she agreed, if he would come to Jamaica with her afterwards. Always before, when she had invited him, he'd shaken his head and they'd laugh about the lack of dinosaur teeth in the Caribbean. Mary had never been there, either. This time, that might have been the reason he nodded, slowly. "I think it would be good for me."

They knew how to break camp quickly. The next day, Jill wrapped up a few parcels to forward on to Jamaica. Scrubb addressed them in his neat label-handwriting; then took them to the post office and wired Lucy with their plans. She packed the rest of her belongings in the Ford and would drop her paid work off with her publisher in New York before they sailed.

They drove all afternoon and might have pressed on a few more hours to Boston, but Lucy wasn't expecting them at any particular time and they were both yawning. Jill rang up Dorothy, an old Experiment House chum—she seemed to be the only one who remembered that Scrubb and Dorothy used to go to dances together. Dorothy shouted something over the bad connection and the sounds of a clanking typewriter which Jill concluded was probably, "Love to see you both, but don't expect me to talk to you."

Dorothywas not so uncivil as that. She was up against a manuscript deadline but emerged from her novel long enough to warmly greet them at the door and feed them clam chowder for supper and buttermilk biscuits with basswood honey for breakfast, after which she shut herself up with her typewriter again, telling them to stay as long as they liked but she must get her work done. Eustace reached for his bag of teeth and bones and brushes. "If you don't mind, Pole? We can move on after lunch."

"Before. Dorothy will just grab a bite and keep writing if it's going well, and if it's going poorly she will make tea and pace the floor. I want to get lobster rolls in Portland."

He shrugged. "All right."

Jill went for a walk through town and up the road toward the high ridge north of town, scribbling quick, loose impressions. The big brick house on the corner. A stray dog. The pine trees, erect on the ridge, and, on the way back, the shadows in a hobo's face as he leaned against a building.

Dorothy waved absently to them when they stuck their heads in to say goodbye. "Can't talk now," she muttered. "Write me when you get there."

They drove on for about an hour and stopped in a little town outside Portland for a late lunch of lobster rolls; then wandered down to the beach, where Jill kicked off her shoes and held her skirts above her knees to go wading. It was already cold enough to make you catch your breath and the rocks bit her bare feet. Scrubb sat on the rocky shore, idly rubbing a winkle shell he'd picked up, staring at the waves and watching the way the sandpipers moved. Jill had taken to studying the wading birds and ospreys along the St. Lawrence when trying to capture something more avian for the _Coelophysis bauri _illustration. She didn't need to see Scrubb's face. She knew he was moping about Mary.

When she came back across the beach, sand sticking to her feet and ankles with every step, he was asleep.

From habit, she fetched her sketchbook and plopped down in the sand beside him. He never liked sitting to be drawn, and so over the years she'd sketched him asleep in various settings—sprawled behind the school gymnasium, head down over textbooks, or face pressed into a block of stone.

This time, there was something lost in his face, a look she'd seen in him before, though she could not at first remember when. It was not like his horror when he realized that the old man in the ship was his friend Caspian, and it was not the look of utter desolation they had shared when they thought Narnia lost forever. It was—it was like when they came back from that second visit, hand-in-hand, knowing they would never return to Narnia.

"But what if the Narnians need us?" he'd asked her. "No one went with us. We're the last of the Friends of Narnia."

She'd hushed him, still holding tight to his hand. "Aslan will manage," she said. "He always does."

And his face had twisted and he'd turned away.

A plover picked its way along the shoreline, _step, pause, poke_, clawed foot raised and then carefully put down again. She set the sketchbook aside and stared out to sea, thinking of anything except the way he'd raved to her, long ago, about _Dr. Mary Anning Russell _and _Archeopteryx _and "_Hips, _Pole! She explained all the differences in saurian pelvic structures to me, the differences between ornithischia and saurischia, and it _made sense_! And, the _Iguanadon—_"

Jill had smiled and nodded and sat with Richard in the sun, talking about owls and waiting for crows to figure out how to get bits of meat out of a jar, while Scrubb helped Mary feed the giant green snakes and Scrubb helped Mary move blocks of stone in the ballroom and Mary threatened to ruin Scrubb's teachers' reputations unless they gave him better marks on his biology papers.

Unbidden, she remembered how Eustace used to talk about his oldest cousin, how in the earliest days of their friendship he would sometimes slip and start his sentences "The High...Peter." And now, Eustace had not mentioned Peter's name at all, either in his sporadic correspondence from the Everglades or in the conversation that ran in fits and starts through the last three days.

She brushed back his too-long hair, and he stirred. "Have I been asleep long?"

"Shh. You should sleep some more. You haven't been sleeping lately, have you?"

"Mrgh. What time is it?"

"A little before two."

He sat up and blinked. "We should be going."

* * *

The Clark house was empty when they arrived a couple of hours later, but Lucy was expecting them and always left the door unlocked. They'd picked up the fixings for roast chicken on the way, and Scrubb chopped the potatoes and onions while Jill washed the bird and took out the giblets. When it was in the oven, he wandered away to read the papers while she sat on the front porch and doodled.

"Anything important?" she called through the open door. Neither of them had paid much attention to the news the last few days, and it was always wise to catch up before seeing Lucy.

"Earthquake in Algeria a week ago, thousands homeless," Scrubb called.

"Any news of Kenya?"

She heard the sounds of pages rustled as Scrubb sorted through the other papers. "Not much."

It really was heartbreaking, the brutality that was going on. "Have you heard at all from Wangari and her family?" Wangari had been Richard Russell's first, Kenyan wife, a lovely person they had all come to know well.

Scrubb went queer and quiet and Jill suddenly realized she'd not been especially adroit in bringing up something so close to the unspoken subject of Mary. But they couldn't avoid it forever—not with Lucy, who never did the proper English thing and swept it all under the carpet. The only things under Lucy's carpets were children's toys and dust.

Scrubb finally said, "I think they are still staying at Russell Hall, but they may have found other housing by now." _Mumble mumble _something that could be _Mary _"... still worried over Gakere and his family."

Polly and Mary had gone to Kenya two years ago, just when it began to get bad, and eventually they managed to get Wangari and most of her family out, but Wangari's second son had already joined the Mau Mau and refused to go to England.

Jill stared at the maple tree across the street, digging the point of her pencil into her pad, thinking about Kenya and the war and the Earthmen. Here, the solution wasn't as simple as killing a witch, or a serpent. There was no easy answer that would let all the oppressed suddenly run home, singing and dancing, turning cartwheels, and lighting off fireworks.

She'd told Scrubb before that Lucy's work in America and elsewhere was important and noble and needed to be done, but that it was not her work—which lay rather in her art and in making the world a more beautiful place. Which brought her neatly back to the block nagging at her. She'd hoped that the change of scene and company would jar something loose in her brain, strike some spark of inspiration, and instead here she was, doodling stars and spirals and patches of hatching, wondering what she was looking for.

A car door slammed. "Aunt Jill! Aunt Jill!"

She looked up. Aleksy and Sofia, the Polish twins Lucy and Jack had adopted two years earlier, were tearing up the front walk. Lucy was behind them, eight months along and her arms full of groceries.

"Jill! You're already here!" cried Lucy as Jill hurried down the porch steps to greet them all. "We were up at Northside today and I stopped in Chinatown on the way back. Jack's somewhere over the Atlantic; he'll be home tomorrow. Have you been waiting long? Is Eustace here?"

"Shoo!" Jill said as the children ran to hug her. "Don't make your mum carry all the packages!"

This started a small tussle between Aleksy and Sofia to see who would be most helpful first, with Lucy's rucksack and a sack of apples landing on the ground. Lucy muttered something about _applesauce _and handed to children the jars and bundles, wafting the scents of exotic groceries everywhere. She squeezed Jill as enthusiastically as ever.

Jill hugged back, reaching around Lucy's tummy. "Scrubb's inside, getting caught up on the news, and there's a chicken in the oven." She picked up Lucy's rucksack and they turned toward the house, locking arms. Jill quickly added in a low voice, "How's Peter?"

"He and Mary sent a postcard from Yellowstone last month, on their way to New Mexico. Mary's still looking for bones. I don't know what Peter's looking for, but I hope he finds it, for I seem to be discussing him more and more frequently." Lucy made a face. "And as a subject of conversation, Peter is duller than dry toast."

Scrubb had papers spread all over the table when they came into the kitchen; he jumped up and awkwardly returned Lucy's hug. Jill bent to hug Sofia properly, but then Aleksy ran outside, leaving the back door open, and the St. Bernard came barreling in. Jill sat down, hard, and Sofia giggled.

"Leo, stop," she complained, trying to turn her face away from his persistent and thorough licking. He huffed and lay down, half across Jill's legs, half on top of Sofia, barking as Aleksy ran back in, his arms full of cat.

"Quitcher had kittens, Aunt Jill!" he yelled, and slid to a stop beside her. "And she's not a Manx after all! They have tails!"

In the middle of this, Jill heard Scrubb ask Lucy about the earthquake, and she rolled her eyes. He always wanted to be current around Lucy and Jack but it came out sounding awkward and uncomfortable, as if he'd rather talk about world news than catch up on his friends.

But Lucy always understood, shook her head sadly and hugged Scrubb again.

"It's awful. Everything's rubble, at least a thousand people died, one shepherd's sheep were _swallowed up_, and so many people are homeless! I wish I was going over there to help."

Sofia squirmed off Jill's lap and went to peer in the oven.

"I'm hungry!" said Aleksy. "When are we going to eat?"

* * *

After dinner, they packed the children off to bed. Scrubb retired shortly after, pleading that he had papers to look through.

"He's in a funk," said Jill, pouring herself more wine as Lucy settled on the sofa.

"Still upset about Peter and Mary?"

She had suspected Lucy knew from her earlier comments about Peter. "How did . . . ?"

"Asim came through here on his way back to England."

"And?"

"Well, Asim is truly terrible about this sort of thing. He was utterly flummoxed and quite tetchy that he'd not had any providential dream about it. I had to remind him that dreaming something like this would be _very _awkward and he should be thankful for Lion-sized miracles."

Jill laughed, well imagining Asim's horror.

"He said that Eustace bought a car and drove off barely a week later."

"Yes," Jill replied with a sigh. "I thought he was over that a long time ago. Didn't he have just as much money down on this outcome?"

"Yes." Lucy paused, looked away. "I'm sure it was still a bit of a shock. He's been in the habit of adoring Mary and admiring Peter for a long time. He never thought two people he idolized so thoroughly could ever be so very disappointingly human. I don't think Eustace ever counted on it actually _happening. _Not any time soon, at least."

Jill couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound bitter. She wasn't sure she was ready to hear how Lucy saw the situation because if Lucy said it, it would be so. She sipped her wine and finally said, "How are you handling—well, I mean, you've not traveled much this year, have you?"

Lucy made another face. "I knew when we adopted Aleksy and Sofia that it would mean curtailing the travel, but I didn't realize how _much, _and Aslan and I had quite a few talks on the matter. Even last spring, when you came through, I was still cross with Aslan, and the idea of being pregnant and staying here _all summer _was just dreadful."

Jill tried not to laugh and failed. "After fifteen years, Lucy, I should not be surprised when you speak so easily of being cross at Aslan."

Lucy smiled wryly. "I know. But we can be cross even with those we love very much." She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa and finally rested her hands on her stomach with a grimace. "As soon as I sit down, he starts kicking; Jack thinks he'll be a footballer."

"You haven't been stagnant," Jill said, returning to Lucy's original complaint. And if Lucy thought she was stuck in one place, Jill hated to think what that said of her own art lately. "You've still been running down to New York to see Mamie and Kenneth, haven't you?" Lucy had been working with children at Mamie and Kenneth Clark's Northside Center in Harlem for the last two years whenever she'd been stateside.

Lucy nodded. "Oh yes, and see, that's what Aslan was telling me. _Brown _was just the beginning here, what with state governors abolishing public education in order to avoid de-segregating the schools. There is so much to be done and I wanted to be right in the middle of it, in Alabama and Mississippi or overseas, like in Algeria. I love traveling and doing my work in those places. I didn't want to hear that Aslan wants me here right now. It took me a while to be at peace with that."

Jill hated traveling any further south than New York when in America. She couldn't stand all the _No Colored _signs. "But you don't have to go so far, do you? There is work to be done here, isn't there? Even in Boston and New York."

"Yes, there is." Lucy sighed and pushed her legs out. "It will be nice when I can see my feet again." She wasn't wearing shoes. "Staying in one place for this time has made me realize something very important, too. I'm learning _so _much from Mamie about psychology and what prejudice, poverty, and fear do to children. I think I need to become a proper doctor."

Lucy took a gulp of her milk. "Aslan has also been reminding me that it is just as much his work to be mother to two or three children as it is to help thousands in an orphanage. I should know all this by now—Aslan knows it took me long enough in Narnia to learn that I can't do everything at once—but there is _so much _to be done. And patience has never been one of my virtues."

She paused. "But what about you? How is your art? What has Aslan been teaching you this summer?"

Jill looked away, at the Russian matryoshka doll on the bookshelf, the Romanian painted eggs on the end table, the African fertility sculptures by the door, and the painting of Una and the Lion on the wall next to her one of her own paintings—a study in oils of tall green trees, brightly colored birds, and a running brook at the edge of a cliff. It was an amateurish effort, but Lucy loved it because it was Aslan's country. ("I've never been there, you know," she said when Jill gave her the painting. "Just on the doorstep, and you got to peek in the door!")

"I suppose I'm in something of a funk, too," she said. "How is it Aslan's work to draw pictures of roses and trees and _Coelophysis bauri_?"

Lucy set down her milk glass and reached for Jill's sketchbook. "May I?"

Jill waved a go-ahead and stared at her crudely-done birds. "Art beautifies the world and is supposed to help us see things with fresh eyes, but if I can't see anything fresh in the world myself how can I—"

"Oh!" cried Lucy, pausing on one of Jill's more recent scribbles. "Jill, this—Aslan's in this one."

She leaned over to see. "Which one?"

Lucy had found the rapid sketch of the hobo in Lisbon—a catch at a face and shoulders set just so, with an impression of bricks behind. "Oh, Jill," she whispered, staring at it. "Art isn't just about beauty. It's about truth, too, and sometimes the truth is ugly, but this—" She set the pad down. "I'm not making sense. Jill, hoboes and the poor, and the wretched and homeless are invisible to most people, but you saw this man and you looked at him, really looked at him, not with disgust or pity, but with love, and it makes me want to love him, too. Jill, it's beautiful."

* * *

Next morning, Lucy sent Jill off with Aleksy and Sofia to search for boiled lobsters to smash, so she could corner Eustace.

He was poring over her morning papers. "I say, Lu," he began, nose buried in the front section, "Do you think Vietnam will be the next Cold War chessboard?"

Eustace might think he was so clever, but Lucy had spent _years _trying to avoid being drawn into the repercussions of Edmund's poor emotional intelligence. She knew every evasive trick in the repertoire of the appallingly clever male.

"Jill isn't going to wait forever, you know," she said in her most conversational tone, the one she used to use when her pocket knife was pointed at someone.

"Huh?"

"Quit hiding behind that newspaper and listen to me."

"I'm not hiding!" But he lowered the paper.

She eased herself into the chair across from his and slid a cup of coffee toward him. "First you ran off to the Badlands for a month; now you're here but hardly speaking to anyone, even Jill. How long do you intend to mope after Mary?"

"'Mm not moping."

She waited, looking at him.

"Wellmaybealittle," he muttered.

"What exactly happened with Peter and Mary?"

She knew perfectly well what had occurred even if Asim had been even more mortified to talk about it than Eustace. Lucy was eight months pregnant, after all, and well aware of where too much rum punch and too much passion could lead. (And given this result—_oh how she longed to see her feet again—_her husband was never going to touch her again.)

"I—er—they—well—kissing—" He broke off and flushed scarlet.

"And how, precisely, does that affect you?" She stirred her coffee thoughtfully. "Other than that you owe Edmund and me each a bottle of rum." (She was looking forward to enjoying it after the baby came. Though... she looked down at her enormous belly and searched in vain for her feet. Maybe she'd give her rum to Edmund and Miriam, instead, and let _them _deal with the outcome).

He didn't answer.

"Eustace, you were infatuated with Mary when you were _nine. _She loved Richard from nearly the same age! She loved Richard perhaps too much, but he was her husband, and he loved her in return as much as he could—"

"Richard's an ass," Eustace said hotly. "He treated Mary wretchedly and no one ever said a word. He can just go hang!"

"Richard is dead," Lucy replied gently. "And now, finally, Mary and, yes, Peter, are finding something together that neither has had before. They understand each other in a different way."

"I know that. After everything Mary went through with Richard, I want her to be happy. And Peter's my High King."

That was a start in the right direction, though it was painful to see that Eustace, for all his many, very genuine accomplishments, did not feel himself deserving of success or happiness. Lucy knew she was not the one to guide him to that understanding. She knew who was. "Then why the moping?"

Eustace suddenly wouldn't meet her eyes. "I'm disappointed in them. Both of them."

Lucy felt a rush of sympathy for him, recalling her own painful and difficult school days during the War when Peter, Edmund, and Susan were off making their own adventures and she was alone, getting her hands beaten by Matron for climbing trees. "You feel like they left you behind."

He nodded.

"They only leave you behind if you do not move forward, Eustace. A wise Dragon once told me that my friends could not join me on all adventures, just as I could not join them. Some must be undertaken alone. Isn't it time to leave this childish fancy away and stop feeling sorry for yourself?"

He said nothing.

* * *

Lucy wasn't sure if anything short of a giant paw thwacking Eustace on the side of the head was going to help, which Leo was more than happy to and in fact did provide in Aslan's place. Still, Eustace did seem to rouse himself. He pulled his nose out of the newspapers and spoke full sentences to Jill when she returned with the children, who were covered in fish bits and cracked shells. He showed Sofia and Aleksy some of the fossils he had collected. But Eustace's stories about the creatures who had borne these jagged and crushing teeth and fearsome claws were dry and boring. Some habits could not be unlearned and Eustace had read the wrong books, or, as Lucy had come to see, he had just not read any of the right books for storytelling.

Ruby invited them all over for dinner and Eustace even consented to go. It was always such a joy (and relief) to be with Tom and Ruby and one reason she managed to live so far from her own family was being so close to Jack's father and his wife. They truly loved Aleksy and Sofia as if they were their own blood grandchildren—though Lucy could tell that Tom was delighted that he would have a grandchild born soon and if his son was hoping for a footballer, Lucy thought the Grandpapa wanted a little princess.

Edmund would have mocked Tom for monarchical sympathies. The two of them still, twelve years after meeting, always managed to bring out each other's most tiresome, legalistic _worst_. It was no wonder no one else in the family had read law. Two lawyers in the family was quite enough, thank Aslan.

With Ruby, it was a pleasure to just be able to put her feet up, lean back in a chair and submit to her cozening. Mum was in England and when Lucy was feeling overwhelmed, trapped, or teary, and missing her own mum and sister across the Atlantic, Ruby was always there with a cup of tea, a kind word, a gentle touch, a bit of practical nurse's advice, and games and stories for Aleksy and Sofia.

That afternoon, they sat around with crackers and cheese (Lucy eyed Jill's wine wistfully but Ruby did not think alcohol was good for babies and Susan was even more adamant based on her time during the War in Madame Vion's maternity hospital). They happily caught up on the news of everyone who was not named Mary or Peter. It was a blessed relief; Lucy knew from painful years in Narnia that listening to others conversing endlessly about Peter's failed romantic prospects was as dull as toast; she was learning that discoursing on Mary's personal relational issues was as exciting as zwieback. Perhaps they did deserve each other!

The atmosphere was good for Eustace, too, who, though not especially conversational, was politely listening to Tom complain about the Red Sox and his latest court case.

Lucy felt a Lion-shaped nudge.

_What? _

Jill said something to Ruby about Christmas in Jamaica and a family wedding. Lucy exchanged a glance with Ruby, who nodded slightly and then returned her attention to Jill.

_Oh, yes, of course! _

Tom was too oblivious to impart any advice much less model appropriate action but Ruby saw the situation all too clearly.

_Thank you, Aslan. _

Through the dinner that followed, Lucy managed to muzzle most of her political opinions, though she was able to quiz Tom on the defense work he had been doing for the ACLU and with a former colleague from Nuremberg.

After dinner, Jill and Eustace offered to do the wash up and Ruby ordered Sophia and Aleksy to help them. "Are you sure, Ruby?" Lucy asked as the sounds of excited chatter, splashing and banging came from behind the kitchen door.

Ruby laughed. "Our grandchildren were coming to dinner, Lucy!" Even speaking so casually spoke of Aleksy and Sofia as her grandchildren made Lucy's heart warm with gratitude. "I knew there might be a broken plate or cup! It's good for them!"

_And for Eustace and Jill_, Ruby implied.

"She knew you would be more likely to break a plate once I said the word _McCarthy_," Tom said, leaning back precariously in his chair and juggling his coffee cup.

"Or drive my steak knives into the dining table," Ruby replied. "And stop abusing the chair, Tom!"

Tom righted himself, muttering about taking commands from the Brigadier of the household.

Lucy accepted the coffee Ruby poured and gave vent to her feelings. "I'm so glad _someone _finally did something about McCarthy. It's horrid, all the things he's done."

"If the Watkins Committee completes its investigation, we might see a vote in the Senate for a censure; they might even strip him of his Chairmanship," Tom added.

"Tom and I are hoping that if the Democrats take the Senate in November, he'll lose his Chairmanship regardless, and _that will be _the end of the witch hunts." Ruby sounded very satisfied with that outcome but then witch hunts were certainly a personal matter for her.

"I do hope so!" Lucy exclaimed. "The Army hearings exposed him as just the worse sort of vile person! Dr. du Bois hasn't been allowed to leave the country for two years, and—"

The air went out of her as the baby kicked in agreement and Lucy gasped.

"Lucy?" Tom asked, leaning forward toward her and looking very worried. "Perhaps a less exciting topic?"

No one ever let her hold forth on the subject of McCarthy more than once an evening.

Ruby took her hand, squeezed it, and was probably taking a pulse, too.

"So tell us about Northside."

Lucy's explanation was interrupted by a crash from the kitchen that was most certainly a platter.

* * *

Jill brought the water-colour roses for Ruby, and when they left Ruby said, "Come on over tomorrow night. Tom will be in New York and I'll do your hair."

There were no pre-existing plans for tomorrow night. Scrubb might be oblivious, but Jill _always _washed her hair on Fridays. So she left Scrubb to cook dinner for Lucy and the children and walked to Tom and Ruby's row house. They shared a pot of tea and then she sat on the bedroom floor and let Ruby tug and tease apart the snarls, rubbing coconut oil into each and separating the hairs one by one. It took a long time—Jill had a lot of hair—but it was a meditative and relaxing process.

"Grandmama used to comb my hair, back in Jamaica, and then my aunts would braid it," Jill said. That was twenty years ago.

"How did you ever manage at boarding school?"

"The cook took pity on me. She must have been tired, after a week on her feet, cooking for the whole school, but she would sit down and comb out my hair, almost as gently as Granny used to, and when I ran out of grease, she got me more. During the War we just made do."

"Mmm." Ruby pulled the last knot free and combed more oil into a dry spot. "Shall I braid your hair, for the sea?"

"Please. And would you tell me a story while you're at it? Please?"

Even as good as most everyone in the family was at telling stories, Ruby still told them the best.

"What sort of story?"

"A melancholy story."

Ruby hummed to herself. "All this talk last night about McCarthy's witch trials reminds me of the Salem Witch Trials. Have you heard of them?"

"A little? That's what the play is about, _The Crucible_, isn't it?" Jill had read about it when she had met with her publisher in New York.

"Yes. In 1692 the Puritans in a small town in Massachusetts were struck with hysteria and killed nearly thirty women and men 'witches.' The first woman accused was an Indian slave named Tituba. This is the story of Keziah, who, it is told, is the woman who who taught Tituba her magic."

Jill settled herself, feeling very young as Ruby parted and twisted her unruly curls into snug cornrows. She'd heard stories like this so often from her Jamaican aunts and grandmothers, and how they so often began with a woman and her magic.

"Keziah was stolen from her home, her husband, and her children. She brought her small charms and midwifery herbs with her and used them to ease the suffering of the women of Salem Village until her master, Aaron Clark, caught her at it."

Jill started. "Clark? Tom's family?"

Ruby's deft, clever fingers smoothed out another tangle. "The very same. Edmund always teases Tom about Americans' short history—he calls it gossip—but there was a Clark aboard the _Mayflower_."

Tom and Edmund's arguments could be very tiresome. "What happened to Keziah?"

"Master Clark whipped her savagely, burnt her charms and herbs, and said he would burn her, too, but she wept and swore that never again would she gather herbs in the wood or utter incantations at midnight. And though Mistress Clark feared her husband almost as much as his slaves did, her pain in childbirth had been eased by Keziah's arts—which we'd of course call sensible midwifery now. She begged for the slave's life and reminded her master that Keziah was with child. Witch or no, slave or free, no good could come of burning one who carried life in her womb, and Mistress Clark feared that the family and all their land would suffer for such a wrong."

"So Aaron Clark spared Keziah's life, though he sent her to work in the fields—bitter, grueling labor for a pregnant woman, and she feared her child would die. It did not. It was born at last, a girl-baby, born in the dead of night under a blood moon. Keziah named her daughter Tituba."

"And Keziah taught Tituba her magic in secret?" Jill said.

"Should I stop if you have heard this story before?" Ruby teased.

"No!" Jill retorted and nudged Ruby's arm with her shoulder. She knew though that there would be a just punishment for Clark's cruelty. The clock chimed seven

"But yes Keziah did teach Tituba her magic. They tended and weeded the patch of ground where she had planted her herbs; Tituba learned to tell white-man's-foot from sassafras, motherwort from mullein, and in stolen early-morning hours or drunken Yuleweek days, Tituba repeated after her mother the words and stories and songs of another land."

Jill hear Ruby sigh a little and her hands paused in their careful braiding. "You did ask for melancholy?"

Jill reached behind and squeezed Ruby's hand. "Yes, please."

"At last the day came when the daughter knew all the mother could teach her. Keziah smiled to herself, a bitter smile, and waited for the dark of the moon."

Jill shuddered, for she knew what this meant in the stories of magic and revenge.

"One leaf and flower at a time, Keziah sent Tituba to gather the ingredients of a grand curse, and no hand but Tituba's plucked the herbs, and no voice but Tituba's uttered the incantations at midnight, and so the curse was cast—that Aaron Clark and his sons should be unlucky in love, choosing always women who did not return their love, so that they might know the pain Keziah had suffered when she was stolen from her home and her husband, and so for ten generations."

Ruby paused in her braiding. This time Jill waited, for Ruby was telling the tale in the finest traditions of the great minstrels of Narnia she had heard at Cair Paravel, and as her own Grandmama would in telling of stories of those who practiced obeah and sent duppies to dream you. She felt bumps rise on her arms for in all the great stories all curses came at a terrible cost.

With a deep breath, Ruby continued, soft and strong. "But such strong magic exacts its price, and the price was this, that Keziah's daughters and her daughters' daughters would always love the Clark men, and never would their love be returned, until the curse was broken."

Jill knew she had asked for a melancholy story but she wasn't sure she'd meant one of women always loving men who would never love them in return "Was the curse ever broken, Ruby?"

Ruby's hand became brisker as she picked up the braiding again and Jill felt the sorrow lift. "As it happens, yes, though it took nearly three hundred years. Would you like to hear the happy ending, then?"

"Yes, please."

"Well, Tituba was later sold to a man named Samuel Parris, and though she was one of the first witches accused in the infamous hunt, she was not one of those killed. She married a man named John, another slave, and had several daughters with him, though a part of her always longed after Jedediah Clark, the son of Aaron. And so it was, for ten generations. The daughters of Keziah, eventually called Smith, always loved the unwitting Clark men, but the Clark men fell time and time again for women who did not love them in return."

"Smith! Does that mean . . ."

She felt Ruby's hands tie off the last braid, but Jill stayed where she was, listening to the ticking of the clock, smelling the faint warmth of the oil Ruby had used.

At last she asked, "How was the curse broken?" For here was Ruby Smith, married to Tom Clark.

"One day, I'd had it up to here, and I left—well, threatened to leave, anyhow, and he realized just how much he couldn't get along without me."

Jill twisted around so she could see Ruby. "Just like that?"

"Well, there was a bit more. Some yelling. And vomiting. But that's between me and Tom."

Jill wasn't sure if she should laugh, but Ruby was smiling. She reached up and hugged Ruby fiercely.

"Don't give up, Jill. But don't do what I did, either, and hang around for twenty years, waiting for him to wake up."

Jill nodded. Maybe something would happen in Jamaica, and maybe it wouldn't. "I can't make him love me," she said. "If he can't get his head on straight, then I'll just dance with Marcus."

"Marcus?"

She grinned. "Marcus and I have known each other forever—we played together as children. He's tall and alarmingly handsome and dances better even than Scrubb." Jill remembered Marcus's last letter and added, "And he never tires of telling me how beautiful I am." Throughout the years of flirtations at Christmases and holidays in Jamaica, she had always held him at arm's length, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to let him get a little closer. He would never be Scrubb, but perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing.

Enough was enough. Perhaps it was time for something new.

* * *

_To be continued by Starbrow._


End file.
